Torchwood: Children of Earth - Review the First

[eumelia]

Over all spoilers for Torchwood: Children of Earth - You were warned!

I apologise in advance for any kind of incoherence or tangents that may or may not erupt in this review and Meta of Torchwood: Children of Earth (TW:CoE). As mentioned in my previous post on the subject (contains spoilers for TW and DW pre-CoE), Torchwood is very much an emotional and cerebral solace for me and everything that happened in this epic arc touched me in a way that just thinking about is making me teary.
And in the interest of full disclosure: I've read quite a few reviews and Meta posts, I was influenced by other people's thoughts.
This isn't a vacuum people.

Okay so what was this cracky epic really about?

On the surface it's a tale of ethics and morality, it's been done before, the tale itself is not new, but then again, what tale is new?
But the storytelling? Oh lord, it was gorgeous. It was touching without being overtly sentimental. It was moving without melodrama that made me want to avert my eyes.
I averted my eyes only once and that was during Jack's resurrection in Day 2 - which friends, was fucking disgusting, okay, that was gross, kudos to the prop masters and make up artists - that was seriously disturbing shit.

Beyond the Grecian epic tragedy of this whole season, I'd like to pause over what I felt has always been the real tragedy of Torchwood.
Jack's immortality was and remains the most disturbing aspect of the narrative.

Directly related to that is the over all frame of these five episodes, that is, family. But really, I think the story was more than just about family, that's very on the surface kind of a deal and doesn't take a whole lot of analysis skills to get the idea of different family combinations, family realities, backgrounds and how just how much your own family, both blood and chosen can fuck up so badly you are left alone unable to look at each other.

This happens by the way.
Jack's inability to look at Alice or Gwen anymore, is very poignant. Jack is more often than not put in a lose/lose situation and comes out of it with a bit of grace, simply because he is a walking memorial of the loss.
I cried a lot watching this, my eyes sting as I write this down.
Jack lost everything, except his life, which is the one thing he doesn't want.
Gwen's insistence that he stay at the end and him leaving left no doubt in my mind that if there is a Season 4, it is not going to include Gwen and not matter how much we want, probably not Ianto either (though we can always hope for a steamy memory/dream/flashback sequence).

Knowing about Alice now really shifted the way I view Gwen and why Jack never really got romantically involved with her. Yes, sexual tension is there. Clearly there is a sexless love-affair going on there… But Gwen… wow, she is so obviously the daughter that he wanted to see every day. Rhys isn't competition. Jack wants to make sure his little girl found a boy that will treat her right, that their relationship won't fail like Alice and her Ex obviously did.
"There are worse fathers"
Dig it in and twist deeper why don't you?
(God, Alice ringing him again and again… I've had "I want my Daddy" moments as well)

Jack and Ianto are so screwed up, going to their blood relatives with the express purpose of experimenting on the kids.
I love it.

I'm kind of sorry neither of those relatives got to meet each respective partner, but that's not what those two do. Not to mention that Alice would have probably given Jack the Evil Eye for screwing a guy who at the very least appears a decade younger than him. Rhiannon would've probably gotten along with Jack fine, though I suspect she'd worry about Ianto being with an older man who is also his boss!
I always worried about that, talk about another thing to screw with your carefully perceived hierarchies.

And by the way, Ianto is The Working Class Hero (the Lyrics and the song on YouTube), if any song suited him more after this epic I do not know of it!

This is very personal to me, I think it's obvious. I really, really identified with Ianto. His insecurity, his self-awareness, his obsessive nature… these were all things I see in myself – and his love of coffee which I suspect developed as a way of either getting closer or distancing him from his father – with whom he obviously had a tremulous relationship – which is something that I sometimes feel with my own parents.

Ianto had a family of origin with whom he was not the closest too any more (giving money to his Niece and Nephew… dude, that was brilliant).
The dialogue between Ianto and Rhiannon was a bit clumsy, but his coming out delivered so beautifully, it rang true.
Ianto's concerns with his sexuality, and the way he and Jack appear to others is at once mundane and so sharp.

I think I'll stop now and continue a little later. There are a lot of themes to explore and continue what I started here, but it is still raw and I hope you all forgive me for stopping at such a seemingly random point.

Comments

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

And by the way, Ianto is The Working Class Hero (the Lyrics and the song on YouTube), if any song suited him more after this epic I do not know of it!

I can only say yesyesYES!thissomuch to everything you've posted about CoE, but I had to comment on this specifically, because only this morning I was thinking that there's definitely also a class angle to CoE. Ianto's family, these are the children these people considered 'useless' and 'expandable' - just in case the perverseness of this selection according to school grades wasn't obvious enough, this really drives the point home.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

The class issue in CoE is stark and painful. Definitely a whole lot of contemporary criticism over Classism in the UK.

The intersection of Class and Sexuality in Ianto is especially interesting (and heart breaking), I always conceived him being a lonely eccentric little boy (who grew up to be a lonely eccentric man) and the background we've been given in CoE really compounds that and makes the previous seasons of TW look like a vacuum of acceptance from a world that basically rejected him (this goes for the whole TW Team, but Ianto especially as he's always been envisioned as the "average Joe in a Bespoke Suit").

And YAY! I'm glad you enjoyed my over abundance of Meta!

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

There are so many themes interwoven in CoE, it's absolutely fascinating. It's certainly heartbreaking, but I don't understand how anyone can call that bad writing.

Would you mind if I friended you?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Not at all! I'll friend you back.

Bah!, I meant that this LJ isn't just fandom (or even just TW fandom) as you may have noticed... just so you are aware :)

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I found the rest interesting, too. :) My journal isn't all about fandom either, it's just that for the last few weeks TW has completely eaten my brain... I should warn you though, when I'm not talking about fanish things, I tend to be rambly introspective with the odd depressive phase, so there's really no obligation to friend back.

[andreawashere.livejournal.com]

"Knowing about Alice now really shifted the way I view Gwen and why Jack never really got romantically involved with her. Yes, sexual tension is there. Clearly there is a sexless love-affair going on there… But Gwen… wow, she is so obviously the daughter that he wanted to see every day. Rhys isn't competition. Jack wants to make sure his little girl found a boy that will treat her right, that their relationship won't fail like Alice and her Ex obviously did."

I have thought a lot about CoE (probably too much), but I really hadn't thought of the comparison between Alice and Gwen. But it makes so much sense! In S1 and S2 I've often found the relationship between Jack and Gwen somewhat irritating (okay, mildly put), because it often seemed as if Jack gave in to Gwens wishes/demands for no good reason. And on several occasions, it reminded me of myself giving in to my children on a bad-Mum-day.

It also explains the weird look near the end of TKKS, and the also weirdish look at the end of Something Borrowed.

In fact, apart from some slightly incestuous behaviour here and there , the pseudo father-daughter relationship is well, the best explanation I've seen so far for about every dialogue between those two in the whole of TW.

Sorry if I don't make a lot of sens, but Thank You!

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Oh I'm just glad someone benefited from that lens!

I'm planning on watching TW from the beginning pretty soon, with all this new canon I'd like to see what I manage to squeeze out of the sparseness of S1 and S2 when it comes to the relationships. Especially Jack and Gwen, because dude, while all the relationships there scream dysfunction, the one between the two of them is just too rich! I mean, I never Gwack'd and more power to those who do, but really... there's father/daughter stuff going on there.

Which really makes you think about what he thought about the affair between Owen and Gwen, since there's obvious paternal feelings (also a tad incestuous) towards Owen.

That was a ramble :)